Beautiful Nightmare

It was beautiful.

Staring out into the silver web of branches thick with gold lit leaves, I leaned my head back against the thin wall of the tree house and brushed through my matted hair with a little white comb that Haldir had given me. The light of early morning blessed the forest with a whispering, dancing, yellow haze, glittering like billions of diamonds in the dew upon the grass far, far below me. There was little underbrush, and where there were patches of turf growth, flowers blossomed in bushes that crawled up and up the silver bark of the trees. Ivy as green as emeralds snaked its way into the branches and from their vines draped curtains of tiny leaves and flowers, like little pearls dripping to the green earth as I saw them. As far as I could see there were trees and flowers, and every now and then the shadows would move, and silver clad figures would dart like ghosts amid the silver and golden boughs. I could even feel eyes upon me, but it did not make me wary or nervous. I felt guarded and protected. I looked above me, into the endless web of twining leaves and glistening boughs. This feeling in my chest was unbelievable. I wanted to cry. None of this should have happened. I should be sitting somewhere in either foundations or art history, not lying in an elvish bed with a shoulder wound caused by elvish arrows, in a land that was supposed to be fictional, created by some man’s brilliance—not an actual place.

I scoffed to myself, drawing my knees up as I lay on my back, tapping my feet absent mindedly as I often did when I thought about things. Even though I was here, in Lothlorien, it was too beautiful and too surreal for me to believe it. What if I was dead, and—even though I had only read Tolkien’s work once—for some reason this was my heaven… or hell? Hell seemed more likely since I was lost, confused, in pain, and in the first few hours of my existence here I had already been shot. I had never been shot in all my life! But Heaven was supposed to be beautiful and shining, like this place. If I had ever imagined Heaven, I now realized that this was the perfect image to match what I had always thought.

There was no way I could be dreaming, for if I had been dreaming, I should have woken up when I was shot with the arrow. That’s how people wake unconscious crime victims up in movies and television… well, not with arrows, but with slaps or cold water, or smelling salts or something. Being a daydreamer, I had always imagined what it would be like to live somewhere not my home, but I had never considered whole other worlds. I had always stuck to idle thoughts of Ireland or Italy or somewhere…tangible.

As if there were not a number of things unsettling enough, my shoulder—in the course of however long I had slept—was feeling unnaturally better. I should not have been any better than I was the night before, or at least not by any noticeable degree, but I was able to lift myself up with my good arm and sit up straight. I had not tried to get out of bed, but still—I could turn my neck without it hurting too terribly, and it didn’t hurt to move my good shoulder. I didn’t feel good about this, though. I felt icky and un natural, like something not real, or something freakish and weird. I took a hesitant, deep breath, releasing it slowly as tears began to well in my eyes, burning the dry lids. I set my comb down and gently lifted the blanket off of my legs, careful not to move my torso too sharply for fear of my injury. My nightgown was very pretty, for it came to my feet, even as I lay on my bed, and it was gathered in heavy ruffles at the hem. Smiling faintly at the loveliness of the gown—something nicer than I had ever had to wear — I bent my knees slowly to stretch my legs a little and the hem of the gown pooled around my ankles. Holy geez, was it that long? Evidently whoever had dressed me didn’t realize that I was only five feet and two inches tall. But I loved long, pretty dresses! Smiling wider, I moved my knees back and forth, rubbing them together, rolling my ankles, and bending all of my toes. It felt good to stretch my over relaxed, stiff muscles, so I gingerly lowered myself down on the mattress and yawned, making my entire body stretch, only wincing when my crippled shoulder thought it should join in on the stretching goodness. My muscles were tired, and a warm heat surged through my body like melted butter while the tendons and sinews stretched as far as they could stretch and I yawned again, deeper, letting my lungs expand to their fullest. The cool, clean air of the forest rushed into my body—it was wonderful and light without any pollution or stink and I couldn’t get enough of it. Breathing deep again, I could feel the air healing my tired body. With a weird, irrational thought I figured the air might have had a hand in healing my shoulder to the degree it was healed that morning, but I didn’t think long upon it, for it was soon replaced by other rambling curiosities.

I remember Haldir sitting beside me, and I wondered how long he had stayed.

Someone had changed my clothing from the ragged remains I had arrived in two nights before, but whom?

What was going to happen to me?

My idle thoughts gave way to heavy, impending fears. I had to find out some way to return things to the way they should be. I couldn’t stay in Lothlorien.

I looked up to the web of silver and gold above my head, delighting for a fleeting moment in its ethereal beauty, but my heart surged with a swell of sickening emotion that caused me to drop my eyes quickly back to my familiar hands and fingers. Should I have considered my arrival into a fairy-tale world a blessing, or was it a curse? What was going on at home that I was missing? Who was missing me? Was I dead to the people I loved so far, far away? What was going to happen to me?

My eyes began to fill with hot, stinging tears and I felt them swell, so I shut them tight and rubbed out the moisture with my fingertips. I couldn’t lose myself. I couldn’t cry, because if I started to cry, nothing would get done. So I didn’t. Swallowing hard, I rubbed my eyes harder until tears stopped trying to form. I took one more last, deep breath and let it go slowly through my teeth. It didn’t help my emotional state to hear how trembling and weak my breath was as I tried to pull myself off of the verge of freaking out, but gradually I collected myself. My eyes were sore as I tried to look ahead, and I blinked, spluttering the remains of tears off of my eyelashes.

As I gained focus, I saw someone standing away from me, watching.

Crap.

Quickly, I wiped my face clean and blinked furiously as I tried to clear my foggy vision. I swallowed once more, clearing my throat. “Yeah, hello?” Had Haldir been watching me freak out? Damn it… I didn’t want anyone to see me like this, especially him—he had already seen me vomit, cry, and lose sanity. If I was an emotional wreck every time he visited, he’d surely start to think that was how I was all of the time.

“Hey, Haldir…” I said. My voice choked a little, and I didn’t get a reply immediately.

Looking harder, I realized it was not Haldir, but it was a woman standing where the doorway to the tree house should have been (there wasn’t a doorway, for whatever reason, but I thought that the middle front of the flat was a good place for a doorway to have been). The woman reflected the early morning light in her golden hair and in the silver fabric of her gown until there was warm light wafting in a bright halo around her tall, slender form. She was beautiful, even more so than a supermodel or actress, and she was frighteningly powerful, even as she stood there harmlessly watching me with a gentle smile on her face. There was no crown upon her head, but there need not be, for she was a queen and it was an obvious fact illustrated by the way she stood—straight and unmoving—and the keenness in her piercing eyes as they met mine.

“Galadriel amin,” The woman said, and her voice was like a trickling stream and a whisper in my mind at the same time. She continued to speak, and as she did the voice in my head grew louder. I could not understand her language the same as I could not understand Haldir’s, but her voice echoed through my mind until I could feel what she wanted me to feel as she spoke. She was Galadriel, and she was a queen of this forest (and that was not something I had simply remembered from reading about her). She was confused and she wanted to help me, but she did not know how and she was sad because of it.

I didn’t know what to do. I felt myself blush, and instantly a flood of insecurities overcame me and I started to fidget as her voice continued ringing inside of my head and she came closer to me and knelt by my bed. She was like a cloud alight with the colors of the setting sun, and I wanted to reach out and hug her, because she felt like she could make everything bad go away. I didn’t, though; instead, I just sat there and stared at her as she smiled once more and reached out her hand, touching my cheek gently with her fingertips.

She was telling me not to worry.

I smiled, and my frigid body relaxed a little. “Sarah.” I said, resting my hand on my chest. Galadriel’s smile brightened and I felt a wave of warmth and comfort sweep over me as she sat herself down on the bed beside me, and rested her hands on her lap. It was a strange thing to see the queen sitting so leisurely next to me, as if she was not a queen at all, but someone just like me. She reached out her hand and touched the wound on my shoulder delicately, resting her fingers on the tender flesh so lightly that I could not feel them—unlike Haldir’s hands, which, though they were gentle compared to a normal person’s hands, still hurt when he changed my bandages. Galadriel continued to speak with me in my mind, her voice like trickling water or a humming wind through soft grasses in the summer and as she spoke her words became clearer. Even though I couldn’t speak whatever language she was speaking, I eventually understood her questions simply by feeling them, and she kept my eyes locked with her own and they displayed her thoughts like pictures seen through my mind’s eye.

My home? Where was I from? I lowered my eyes mournfully. Sudden waves of regret and sorrow swept over me as I thought of my home in the little Oklahoma town of Pryor, and of the home I was never able to really experience fully in Kansas City. I remembered the dilapidated streets of my post WWII neighborhood and of my little white house where my brother, father, sister and I lived. I thought about my mom and sister now living in San Antonio with my mom’s boyfriend. I though t of the times I would go to the fertilizer plant my dad worked at after dance class on Wednesdays when he worked the graveyard shift from seven p.m. to seven a.m. I thought of my crappy high school, and even that memory made me want to cry. My first crush… my choir, my best friends whom I thought I had left so far behind when I moved five hours away to Kansas City, but now realized I would never see again. I would never see my dad again, or my mom. For some reason, their faces popped up in my brain most often than any other memory, and it was their happy, loving eyes that finally made me cry. Hot tears scorched my cheeks again, and the bags under my eyes were so swollen and dark from the trauma I had had to deal with already that they hurt, literally. I was quiet, and didn’t sob like a blubbering idiot, but I couldn’t look at the magnificent Lady as she sat beside me, her smile gone, her bright, immaculate face crest fallen and full of pity and sorrow for me. That was sickening. I hated people seeing me emotional (whether it was anger, sadness, etc.) and it was even worse when I knew they felt sorry for me and weren’t trying to hide it at all.

“I’m sorry…” I said, wiping my face furiously, though I couldn’t stop crying.

Galadriel reached out her hand once more and touched my cheek softly, like my mom used to do when I was on the verge of a breakdown, and her thumb gently massaged my skin, tenderly moving my face up once more until she found my watery gaze once more. And she was smiling softly. She understood what I had used to be, and what I felt now that I was something different—I was a stranger without a home, an identity, friends, or family. I don’t know if she read my thoughts, or if she could feel my words the same as I could feel hers—breaking the language barrier—but she understood where I was coming from and I knew that, and it made me feel so much better, good enough to stop crying.

As I wiped my last tears on the now very dirty sleeve of my pretty white chemise, Galadriel told me that I was supposed to stay there—in that forest—for a little while. I agreed that I should, but it was natural for me to question my welcome there, and I did. The Lady laughed and bent down, wrapping her arms around me in a calming embrace, enveloping me in a feeling of happiness and welcome. It was necessary for me to stay there. I remembered the wound on my shoulder and figured it probably would not have been wise for me to go tromping about to find my way in that new world with a dysfunctional shoulder.

Galadriel giggled—a happy, tinkling sound--, further abandoning her regality and placing herself at a more personal level with me (something I thought was odd and flattering at the same time), and rose to her feet with a sigh and an effortless movement.

“Come and see…” I could almost understand as if she were speaking English to my face when she walked toward the edge of the tree house and turned back to face me, motioning with a wave of her pale hand.

I wanted to follow, but I was nervous about my stupid shoulder! Well, I had been sitting upright earlier without much trouble. Maybe walking wouldn’t be that hard? So, I swallowed my nerves and rose gingerly from beneath the soft, silken sheets of my new elven bed, placing my feet on the floor of the tree house, and gaining my balance as well as I could without moving my left arm much. Proud of myself when I found I could stand fully erect without much pain or distorted vertigo, I walked quickly toward the Lady with a smile, not tripping over myself at all. She was looking over the edge of the tree house floor, and so did I when I stood next to her.

That was a mistake.

The first time I ever looked over the edge of a Lorien talan, I was as much wrought with fear as any human being could possibly be, for it was the first time I realized I was eighty feet in the air, on a floor that was suspended between the seemingly too-thin branches of the willowy silver Mallorn trees, and that the walls all around me did not appear as if they would keep me from falling to my death if I stumbled against them. They looked paper thin and so elaborately carved with design that there was almost nothing to them.

I had never been scared of heights before, but I was then for the first—and certainly not the last—time. I stepped back quickly, nearly falling, catching myself against a small, round table that was lifted off of the floor upon a tall pedestal. I held on to the edge of the table and re steadied myself.

“It’s too high!” I shook my head as Galadriel laughed at me and beckoned me toward her.

I’m sure it was beautiful. I’m sure that seeing Lorien’s full beauty the first time I had ever had the chance to really look at it would have much influenced me later on, but I couldn’t bring myself to stand close enough to the edge of the tree house to see past the middles of the great, tall, Mallorn trees.

Galadriel continued laughing, but the sound made me feel ashamed. “Sorry.” I said, lowering my eyes. “I guess I’m scared of heights…”

Galadriel shook her head quickly and giggled, motioning toward the vast, plummeting space beyond the safety of the solid tree house floor. “Si ta amin mar Caras Galadhon.” She said, and her voice echoed and resounded around me in the air, as clear as a birdsong, and as reminiscent as a longing memory.

“Caras Galadhon…?” I repeated what the lady said, but fell quiet quickly. My voice broke the sweet melody hers provided with a cracked sound and I cleared my throat. “Is that this place…? I thought it was Lothlorien?”

The lady chuckled, nodding her head, and gestured wide with both of her arms, saying: “Si ta Lothlorien,” and then she pointed with a delicate movement of her finger to whatever I was too frightened to see beyond the tree house we both stood in and said: “Si ta amin mar Caras Galadhon.”

I didn’t get the first things she said, but I thought I understood that wherever I was at that moment—in that general area—was Caras Galadhon, and that the forest which stretched out endlessly all around was Lothlorien. That sort of made sense. So was Caras Galadhon a city? Evidently it was, or that was the only thing that really fit into the equation. I wanted to peek over the edge of the tree house floor, but I couldn’t bring myself to release my steady grip on the small table safely toward the middle of the floor. If this was really Lothlorien and it was really anything at all the way it was described when I’d read about it, then I knew that the tree branches and trunks, as lovely as they were, were not the greatest things for me to see. I would have to move sometime eventually anyway. If the tree house was going to collapse and send me plummeting to my death, it probably would have done so already. I looked ashamedly up at Galadriel, but she was still smiling warmly, waiting, but not expectant of anything. In fact, it almost looked as if she was giving up hope and was going to leave. Before she actually turned, I gasped and cleared my throat. “Wait.” The Lady stopped and turned toward me once more. When she did I was struck with her power full on and I almost regretted keeping her from going. Was I going to embarrass myself in front of her? I relaxed my white knuckles from their iron tight grip on the wooden table, surprised that there weren’t any finger indentations, and took slow, timid steps toward the edge of the tree house once more. I kept my eyes on the trees ahead of me so that when I drew close enough to the edge to see over it and below, I was not struck with the breath taking height immediately. The lady held out her hand behind me, but I was steady for the moment.

Slowly, I opened my eyes and traveled the trunk of the tree before me until my gaze struck the ground. In this way, I was able to look without being frightened, and without getting as much of a slap in the face from the sheer height of the tree house. I was glad that I looked over the edge as soon as I had done it, for Caras Galadhon was not just any sort of normal city, and certainly more beautiful than it had ever been described while reading about it. I’m not sure I can give an accurate description of it now, for its beauty escaped me (as many things do, and you as the reader will be subjected to greater extents of my incapability later on) and the closest thing I can say to give any kind of vision of what the city of the Galadhrim looks like is to say that it is so beautiful there is no mortal description for it.

Lights were suspended in thin air, but they danced like little stars which belonged to the forest all of its own, and the air was made silver by their eerie light. Gold reflected from the trees above and the sun beyond them, breaking the silver mist with bobbing patches of warmth and joy as their light rained down through the wind rustled filters of leaves. And all about people walked—or elves, I should say—talking and laughing and going about their daily lives not totally unlike any human city. But these elves were fantastically beautiful, and appeared as ghosts with the way they moved and spoke. Their voices were quiet whispers and of soft tongues and from every direction all around me there was song echoing from an invisible choir, and they sang of things that tore at my heartstrings while at the same time enlightened me and put me at peace. For the first time since my horrible arrival in this new land, I felt at peace. I wanted to gaze out onto the city forever and never move. They could have cast me in stone so that I would never die and could have remained in that place for eternity, just watching, listening and dreaming within a dream.

I sighed, feeling myself smile. “This is amazing.” I whispered, and Galadriel nodded, understanding what I had breathed by the sheer awe clearly written across my baffled face. My heart leapt to my throat and I gasped, grinning widely as I turned quickly to the Lady. She looked down on me and smiled, answering me silently. “May I go down there?” I pointed to make my question easier to understand, gesturing toward the ground. “Oo, and is Haldir going to meet us?” I bobbed up and down, giggling, but that was a terrible mistake, for my left shoulder moved and sent a shock of intense pain through my torso. “Crap…” I hissed and clutched at my nightgown as my hand rested on my wound protectively.

Galadriel tilted her head and reached out, removing my fingered shield from the arrow wound. Her face was concerned, but not despondent, so I guess that was a good sign. She lifted the patched bandage with her fingers, and I winced, because it seemed a little gross to me to want to touch someone’s dirty bandage. But she was pleased, I could tell by the way her eyes lit up. Looking at her as she smiled made me want to cry, for every mother figure I had ever had was wrapped up in a single package within Galadriel, and she didn’t demand that I call her ‘majesty’ or anything like that. She acted like a friend, not a superior power, or being. She said something in elvish and smiled, laughing a little. I guessed I was alright to go, and left the Lady quickly as I ran to my yellow bag on the floor beside my bed. Eagerly, I took out my bra, shorts, and t-shirt that had been left in there from fountain swimming a while back in Kansas City. I sniffed each article of clothing carefully, making sure they didn’t reek and almost so eager to get out into Caras Galadhon to forget about Galadriel still watching me. I caught her looking out of the corner of my eye and blushed, lowering the butt of my shorts from my nose and placing my clothes on my bed. Laying each piece out properly, I noticed how horribly wrinkled everything was and my heart sank. As eager as I was to get into my favorite blue shorts and white Hanes shirt, I knew my clothes were crappy compared to what everyone else would be wearing. I looked up at her hopelessly.

“I don’t have any other clothes to wear.” I said, folding my own outfit and tucking it away into hiding beneath my bed. “I mean, unless it’s alright that I wear that stuff.” I motioned toward the clothes I had just hidden, but Galadriel stopped me with a firm, but gentle word. Smiling once more, she turned my gaze with her own toward something that was lying across the small table I had clutched to for dear life earlier; though I had thought it was a table cloth or runner. Curious, I rose and walked over to the table, my face bursting into blushes with excitement. Oh joy! It was going to be like dressing up for a renaissance faire!

There was a simple dress lying across the table top, with a pair of slippers and several frocks and petticoats to wear beneath folded on top of it. Excitedly, I lifted the dress out from beneath the shoes and undergarments, and giggled loudly, even using my injured arm as much as I could so I could hold the fabric out all the way and look at it fully. It was a pale yellow, with tiny white flowers embroidered all over, like calico, and the fabric was like cotton, only slightly heavier. The fabric was gathered at the hips, and even as I held the dress up taller than I was, the hem graced the floor, suggesting that the weight of the dress was due to the amount of fabric used to make it. It looked like something right out of an episode of the History Channel. I laid the dress on my bed and returned to the table, taking up the petticoats and shoes in my arms, turning to look at Galadriel.

But she wasn’t there.

I looked, furrowing my brow, marveling at the silence which she left behind her. Maybe she was trying to give me some privacy to change? Butterflies swarmed in my stomach as I remembered that I was going to tour Caras Galadhon and be among these beautiful elves, a guest in their midst. That was it… or maybe Galadriel had gone to get Haldir? I blushed to think about him, finding myself staring off into space when he came to mind. He had spent a lot of time with me in the past couple of days, and I knew he was a general, or something, so it’s not like he had all kinds of free time. Maybe he was supposed to be taking care of me? He was the one who found me, after all, so it only made sense.

I hummed lightly to myself as a song popped into my head, though it was one that I was making up as I went about the chamber, moving my left arm up and down slowly and marveling at how quickly it was healing. There had been no blood on my bandage because something those elves had given me was making the wound heal incredibly fast, and now it was merely stiff and sore, and only really hurt if I moved it to sharply or positioned my torso in any weird way. I hadn’t really eaten much, or drank much, so their food wasn’t like fairy food or anything, healing my body and soul… but they were very touchy people—or both Haldir and Galadriel were—and they had both visited me, and touched my wound, dressing and everything. Maybe the medicine they were putting on it healed it super fast, or maybe they could heal from their fingers. I knew almost nothing about these people, so anything really seemed possible.

Whatever the reason was, I was not going to fight it, and I smiled to myself as I pulled the blankets and sheets of my bed up and tucked them neatly, folding them and smoothing them until my bed was made and I crawled up into it, sitting on my knees before my new clothes Galadriel had given me. I had never been so excited to wear new clothes, but these were so pretty, and I had always loved dresses and skirts over any other kind of clothing. I pulled my hair over one of my shoulders and stood on my knees, gathering my nightgown around my hips before lifting it over my head completely. I was still wearing my bra from however many days ago, but my panties were still missing.

Flashback memories from that night came into my mind and I sat down modestly, hanging my head as I tried to forget the awful feelings of loneliness that I was trying to get rid of. And I didn’t want to think about where my panties might have gone. I wanted to focus on the day that was before me, and what new excitement and wonders would lay in my new home, which I presumed to be this forest in Middle Earth. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t really talk to anyone besides Galadriel, and even then I was only guessing what she was saying by the tones in her voice or the way she looked t me. I sighed heavily, stretching my lungs so I could take in as deep of a breath as possible, so I could soothe myself, so I could relax again. Rubbing the corners of my eyes to stop myself from crying, I tried to pick my heart back up from where it had plummeted deep into my stomach.

‘Stop crying!’ I told myself in my head, breathing deeply once more. ‘I’m going to make it here… I’m going to make it…’